Cities striking out on own in Trump era

Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro speaks at a journalists forum on "Cities and Equity in the Era of the Trump Presidency."

Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro speaks at a journalists forum on "Cities and Equity in the Era of the Trump Presidency." (Roger Showley)

Roger Showley

Cities are going it alone as they cope with tightening finances, the pressures of growth or decline and a new administration without any clear urban policy.

That was the message in a three-day journalists seminar, “Cities and Equity in the Trump Presidency,” at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., earlier this month.

Anthony Flint, Lincoln’s director of public affairs, said he reached out to the Trump administration and no one was available to participate. Republican congressional representatives also were absent, their places filled by former President Barack Obama’s administration officials, Democratic mayors and others on the outs.

Julián Castro, former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, and Obama’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said most presidents have been “hostile” to cities — he exempted Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and Obama — but mayors and local officials still have to cope with real world problems.

“One thing I know is that cities have always played a powerful role in the life of individuals and the life of the nation,” Castro said.

“I’m convinced that during the Trump administration, cities will take on several important roles, some familiar and some relatively new.”

A string of panels tackled everything from infrastructure to immigration with much discussion on the economic challenges in what one speaker described as a “U-shaped” job picture — many at the top and bottom of the wage scale and a dwindling number in the middle.

Author Richard Florida, who popularized the “creative class” description of today’s tech-savvy cities, spoke of a new crisis in urban America and across the globe — a “crisis of success” in which some “superstar” cities are doing spectacularly well in a “winner-take-all” environment, while chronic urban problems have been pushed out to the suburbs.

The challenge at home is to develop a model of “inclusive prosperity” that includes affordable housing on a “massive scale,” high-speed rail lines and reduced land-use regulations, Florida said.

Former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said she is picking up periodic rumors from her former colleagues about staff changes and program terminations ordered by Trump appointee Scott Pruitt. But she put her faith in an unlikely sector of society that environmentalists historically have distrusted.

“Most of the time I worry about the big, bad, private sector,” she said. “Now I”m rooting for them.”

She and other speakers said cities and businesses will have to cope with changing weather patterns, rising sea levels and other effects of global warming, even if Pruitt, Trump and other administration officials downplay or deny climate change.

“Global instability is likely to result from climate change,” said Armando Carbonell, Lincoln’s urban planning department chairman. “In the U.S. the military had already become aware of this. It’s a national security issue as well as an environmental issue.”

For example, he said, the Navy is concerned about landside equipment vulnerable to flooding.

Turning to sanctuary cities, Alejandra St. Guillen, director of the Boston Mayor Martin Walsh’s office of immigrant advancement, said the city is economically dependent on immigrants, both legal and undocumented.

But the city could face the cutoff of all or part of the $500 million in federal funds included in the city’s $3 billion budget if the Trump administration succeeds in penalizing cities that do not cooperate with immigration authorities.

“The mayor says not for any pot of money will we sacrifice our values,” St. Guillen said, adding that city officials believe federal law will protect Boston from punitive funding cuts.

On infrastructure, panelists hailed Trump’s promise of a trillion-dollar funding program but bemoaned the proposed budget cuts in transportation, housing and other urban projects and subsidies.

On the other hand, Denny Zane, executive director of Move LA, which has championed mass transit projects for the past 10 years, said recent voter-approved tax increases in Los Angeles demonstrate a possible shift in public attitudes toward construction and maintenance of infrastructure systems.

“Fortune favors the bold,” Zane said. He said both a broad-based coalition and bold vision of projects are needed to succeed. “You’d better have a program that touches all parts of the county.”

Marcia Hale, president of Building America’s Future, a national infrastructure coalition chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said more than 70 percent of infrastructure referendums have passed in the recent years.

“People are willing to pass it if you tell them what they’ll get,” Hale said.

San Diego was not mentioned during the conference but Mayor Kevin Faulconer is backing a hotel room tax to fund a convention center expansion, transportation improvements and homeless programs. An initiative for a professional soccer stadium also is headed toward the Nov. 7 special election, but no tax increase is proposed.

Some Rust Belt cities are fighting decline by reinventing themselves. Karen Freeman-Wilson, mayor of Gary, Indiana, said the city of about 80,000 hosts a major commuter college campus and medical school, lies on the south shore of Lake Michigan, touts an extensive transportation network and boasts lower housing prices than Chicago, located 25 miles to the west.

“That’s what we’ve used to attract millennials,” Freeman-Wilson said. “We’ve said to young people to come help us rebuild.You can help us fix this issue and solve some of our most pressing problems and then go to LA, Chicago, and put to work what you’ve done here.”

On the other hand, Luke Bronin, mayor of Hartford, Connecticut, expressed frustration with his state’s fiscal plight, exacerbated by its failure to change with the times.

“Why has Massachusetts leapfrogged Connecticut in growth? The answer is Connecticut is a suburban economy in an urban age,” Bronin said. “It has to make investments, especially in the capital city. But at the state and local level, making up for a pullback of federal resources would be awfully hard to do.”

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